Too much information sources the downfall of democracy? Do you hear a deafening call for silencing those who spread the news?

Obama bemoans ‘diversions’ of IPod, Xbox era

(AFP)

HAMPTON, Virginia — US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.

Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.

He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

Obama, who uses the handful of Commencement addresses that he delivers each year to meditate on societal developments broader than the minutiae of everyday politics, warned the world was at a moment of “breathtaking change.”

“We can’t stop these changes… but we can adapt to them,” Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers.

“Education… can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time,” he said.

Hampton University is a historically black college, and Obama noted the huge disparity in educational achievement between African Americans and other racial groups in the United States and the world.

(Since when? Maybe he should look up the latest stats. One of the reasons we’re lagging behind in education are the tremendous costs in the US vs. what other countries subsidize for their young people. When you start comparing apples to apples…and oh by the way, he needs to find out where the disparity really is before he shoots off about who is really affected…)

But he urged the graduates to take inspiration from the example of Dorothy Height, a civil and women’s rights icon who died, aged 98, last month, who fought racial prejudice to secure a college education.

“A black woman, in 1929, refusing to be denied her dream of a college education,” Obama said, reprising Height’s life story.

“Refusing to be denied her rights, refusing to be denied her dignity, refusing to be denied… her piece of America’s promise.”

Obama argued that from the days of the pioneer politicians who founded the United States, until the modern day, education and knowledge had been the key to progress and US democracy.

He drew a line between Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and today’s challenges.

“What Jefferson recognized… that in the long run, their improbable experiment — called America — wouldn’t work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn’t have the best interests of all the people at heart.

“It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged, if we held our government accountable, if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship.”

This from WSBTV.com, now just because senior meals are funded by federal money, the Senior Center invokes separation of church and state. Puhleeze, people, lets elect some folks with some sense????

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. — Preston Blackwelder proudly showed off a painting of his grandmother that had hung next to the front door of his Port Wentworth home.She was the woman who led him to God, Blackwelder said Friday.And with that firm religious footing, Blackwelder said it would be preposterous to stop praying before meals at Port Wentworth’s Ed Young Senior Citizens Center near Savannah because of a federal guideline.”She would say pray anyway,” Blackwelder said of his grandmother. “She’d say don’t listen.“But Senior Citizens Inc. officials said Friday the meals they are contracted by the city to provide to Ed Young visitors are mostly covered with federal money, which ushers in the burden of separating church and state.On Thursday, the usual open prayer before meals at the center was traded in for a moment of silence.The dilemma is being hashed out by the Port Wentworth city attorney, said Mayor Glenn “Pig” Jones.Tim Rutherford, Senior Citizens Inc. vice president, said some of his staff recently visited the center and noticed people praying shortly before lunch was served. Rutherford said his company provides meals like baked chicken, steak tips and rice and salads at a cost of about $6 a plate. Seniors taking the meals pay 55 cents and federal money foots the rest of the bill, Rutherford said.”We can’t scoff at their rules,” he said of federal authorities. “It’s a part of the operational guidelines.”Rutherford said the moment of silence was introduced to protect that funding. He said although the change may have been misinterpreted, perhaps his company could have done a better job selling it.”It’s interpreted that we’re telling people that they can’t pray, but we aren’t saying that,” he said. “We’re asking them to pray to themselves. Have that moment of silence.”Mayor Jones said he was outraged by the change and has promised to find a solution.”It was one of the hardest things I ever did as mayor is to look those people in the eyes and ask them to be patient with me and honor their God in a moment of silence until I can have a resolution to this,” Jones said. “For me to look at their eyes and tell them they can’t thank God for their food, it’s unheard of – I can’t take it.”Jones said he flirted with the idea of ending a contract the city has with Senior Citizens Inc.”Like one lady said, ‘You can stop me from speaking, but you can’t stop me from praying what’s in my heart,”‘ he said. “But the best answer right now is that we’re trying to get the best information possible and legal council is looking at what would happen if we continued to pray.”Blackwelder said the center’s already fragile visitors have been rattled.”This is, in my view, an unnecessary intrusion into the private lives of individuals. It’s a bad place to draw a line in the sand.”

Some of the most important questions for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will concern the meaning of the Constitution and what limits there are to government action. In the time of the Tea Party movement, the public will want to know what she believes are the limits on federal power. Kagan would become the only justice who had no prior experience as a judge and is a lesbian. The other justices all served previously as federal appeals court judges.

Kagan is also Jewish (which is ok), but just as an observation, if she is confirmed, that will make two Jews and five Catholics on the court. There will be no Protestants on the court for the first time in the nation’s history,which is kind of odd since there are more Protestants than any other religious affiliation.

have predicted this. The president wanted a highly credentialed non-judge who would serve for a long time and wouldn’t cost too much political capital. He got a 50-year-old solicitor general and former dean of Harvard Law School – the first female in each post – whose record the Senate (and media, and activists) already examined in a confirmation process that put her into her current post. That her appointment would put three women on the high court for the first time also doesn’t hurt.

Kagan is certainly not the worst possible nominee from among those in the potential pool – that would’ve been Harold Koh, had President Obama been most inclined to appoint the first Asian-American justice – but others would have been better in various ways. Although all Democratic nominees would be expected to have similar views on hot-button “culture war” issues like abortion, gay rights and gun control, Diane Wood is a renowned expert on antitrust and complex commercial litigation, for example, and Merrick Garland would almost certainly bring a stronger understanding of administrative law. Although some on the left are concerned that replacing Justice John Paul Stevens with Kagan “moves the Court to the right,” there is no indication that the solicitor general is anything but a standard modern liberal, with all the unfortunate views that entails on the scope of federal power. Another concern is her mediocre performance in her current position – the choices of which legal arguments to make from those available to her in defending federal laws in Citizens United and United States v. Stevens, for example, were not strategically sound – though she may well be better suited to a judicial rather than advocacy role.

In any event, with Democrats still holding a 59-seat Senate majority, Elena Kagan’s confirmation is in no doubt whatsoever. The more interesting aspect of the next couple of months, culminating in hearings before the Judiciary Committee, will be the debate over the meaning of the Constitution and what limits there are to government action. In an election year when a highly unpopular and patently unconstitutional health care “reform” was rammed through Congress using every procedural gimmick imaginable, voters are more sensitive to constitutional discourse now than they have been in decades. From bailing out the financial and auto industries to fining every man, woman and child who doesn’t buy a government-approved health insurance policy – and, coming soon, regulating carbon emissions – the Obama administration is taking over civil society at a rate that alarms Americans and fuels both Tea Party populism and interest in libertarian policy solutions (which Cato is happy to offer but wishes were implemented on the front end instead of being invoked as a response to destructive statism). The Kagan nomination is the perfect vehicle for a public airing of these important issues.

Senators should thus ask questions about the meaning of the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the General Welfare Clause, to name but three provisions under which courts have ratified incredible assertions of federal power divorced from those the Constitution discretely enumerates. If Elena Kagan refuses to answer such queries substantively – employing the usual dodge that she may be called upon to interpret these clauses as justice – we can rightfully hold that response against her, as she herself counseled in a law review article 15 years ago

Solicitor General Elena Kagan , told that court in September that Congress could constitutionally prohibit corporations from engaging in political speech such as publishing pamphlets that advocate the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office.

Kagan’s argument that the government could prohibit political speech by corporations was rejected by a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

In a scathing review,Justice Kennedy described the law Kagan had defended as an illegitimate attempt to use “censorship to control thought.”

“When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. “This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

What the heck is going on in America, our national flag is offensive? Well I can see the writing on the wall now, since the friction between blacks and whites isn’t there like it used to be we have to replace that with another race. With the borders wide open the natural ones to use would be our neighbors to the south and it appears they are taking the bait quite well, along with the “politically correct” in California.The U.S. is the only nation expected to tolerate blatant disregard for our immigration policy. What happened to the days when the immigrants came to America to be a part of it and assimilate into the culture? Why would you want to leave a communist country that has failed, move to America and then try to change it into the country you just left instead of leaving that behind and starting a new life for yourself? Divide and conquer I guess will work and it appears California is a lost cause and financially broke as well.

Teacher Deems American Flag “Offensive”

The battle over the American flag has reached a middle school art class in California’s Santa Rita School District where a student was told not to draw Old Glory because it was “offensive,” while another student was praised for drawing a picture of President Obama.

Tracy Hathaway, of Salinas, CA, told FOX News Radio her 13-year-old daughter was ordered to stop drawing the American flag and start another project at Gavilan View Middle School.

Even more striking, another student in the same art class drew a picture of President Obama and was praised by the teacher.

“The picture of Barack Obama was in red, white and blue hues,” Hathaway said. “ The teacher said it was great. But when it comes to the flag – all of a sudden it was offensive?”

Hathaway said she took her concerns to the principal – and he was “floored” and apologized for what happened. He arranged a meeting with the Hathaways and the teacher.

“My husband point-blank asked her what she found offensive about the picture – the American flag or the words, ‘God Bless America,’” she said. “The teacher didn’t say a word.”

Hathaway said she was especially concerned that a picture of President Obama was praised yet a picture of the American flag was deemed offensive.

“That showed where she stood in the political spectrum,” she said “But this was not a political class. This was not a religious class. This was an art class. “

“My daughter wasn’t trying to break any rules and she wasn’t trying to create a scene,” she said. “She was just expressing her view and saying this is America and I want God to bless it.”

Mike Brusa, the superintendent of schools, told FOX in a written statement that he had contacted the principal and that the issue “was taken care of to their (the parent’s) satisfaction.”

“The school administration and the parents did not view this as significant enough to bring it to the superintendent’s office,” he wrote.

However, Hathaway said her daughter has yet to receive an apology – and in fact – the teacher told the girl that she should not have gotten her parents involved in the matter. (this teacher should be ashamed of them self telling the child that, the teacher was trying to stay out of trouble.)

“My daughter felt like her rights were being trampled on – she was doing what she thought was right.” she said. “It’s disturbing. It really is disturbing. When I was in junior high we didn’t have a lot of the problems they are having now. We were allowed to speak our mind. It’s absolutely devastating for me. Last time I looked, this is America. This is still a free country.”

Why does this not surprise me or anyone else keeping up with what Barry Soetoro Barack Obama is doing to Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.I mean all he’s done is insult their Prime Minister, deny visas to their scientists wanting to learn about nuclear energy which they’ve been doing for years, demanding they stop building in their Capital city Jerusalem and refuse to sell Israel any F-16 fighter jets, while selling them to Egypt. Other than these “minor” things I just can’t imagine why the Jewish people are turning against Obama. (sarcasm of course)

Obama Has Lost Almost Half His Support From the Jewish Population in the US

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Left) listens as US President Barack Obama speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington May 18, 2009. Obama voiced support for creation of a Palestinian state in talks on Monday with Netanyahu, who held back from endorsing the main cornerstone of Washington’s Mideast policy. Photo/ REUTERS

The awakening has begun…when the liberal Jews in America abandon you, you’re in deep do do.

(Washington Times) – It looks like a core group that supported President Barack Obama during his election is dropping their support for him by half. These kinds of numbers are astounding, and Democrats running for office in even safe blue districts should not necessarily be waving over the president during the campaign season to help them with their re-election campaigns, because no incumbent appears to be safe.

Arutz Sheva is reporting President Barack Obama has lost almost half of his support among Jewish Americans.